Katie Miller, right, gives a tour of Manchester College in Indiana. She enrolled in the three-year program but later opted out. Illustrates COLLEGE (category a), by Daniel de Vise (c) 2011, The Washington Post. Moved Thursday, June 16, 2011. (MUST CREDIT: Courtesy of Manchester College.)

In a typical year, Kara ZumBahlen teaches seven courses in the art history department at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, where she earns $28,700 a year.

That’s one more course than a tenured professor is expected to teach, but ZumBahlen is an adjunct professor so she earns $4,100 per class with no benefits.

“I basically make less to teach the course than what one student pays to take the course,” the Minneapolis resident said.

ZumBahlen is among the growing ranks of part-time and nontenured professors upon whom U.S. colleges and universities are increasingly dependent.

Nontenured professors at three private colleges in St. Paul are trying to unionize as a way to fight what they say is low pay, uncertain employment and poor working conditions, which include limited professional development and little or no office space.

Ballots for a vote on whether to form a union began arriving in the mailboxes of about 90 part-time and nontenured faculty at Hamline University this week, just days after their colleagues at Macalester College suddenly called off a union vote.

At St. Thomas, about 300 nontenure-track professors are expected to vote on a union next month.

Administrators at the three schools have come out against unionization, saying it would interfere with their ability to react quickly to fluctuations in enrollment and course demands. Schools use adjuncts to navigate tight budgets and introduce professional expertise into their classrooms.

“We think we can more effectively address their issues if we work with them directly, rather than through an intermediary,” said St. Thomas spokesman Doug Hennes, who added that nontenure track professors teach about 25 percent of classes at the school.

“We’ve used adjuncts for a long time. We value them. They bring something extra to what we are able to offer students.”

The unionization efforts in St. Paul are part of a national push by the Service Employees International Union to organize adjunct professors, who typically cobble together a living by teaching at several colleges, earning less than $5,000 per course without benefits.

In Minnesota, the average annual salary for a full professor ranges from $67,700 to $134,300 depending on the institution, according to the American Association of University Professors 2013 survey.

Nationwide, about 1.3 million part-time and nontenured professors make up 75 percent of college and university teaching staffs, the U.S. Department of Education says.

Adjuncts professors — those who teach part time — account for about 40 percent of college and university teaching positions in the U.S.

It’s unclear whether the Macalester administration’s opposition to the union push played a role in the decision by adjuncts to cancel their vote last week.

In an email, members of the adjuncts’ organizing committee said a larger discussion was needed before a vote.

“After speaking and listening to dozens of our contingent colleagues, it has become clear that many on both sides of the issue believe that more time is necessary to consider this decision,” their message said.

Macalester spokeswoman Barbara Laskin said the SEIU withdrew its petition for an election the day before the vote was to begin. Laskin said that if the union had been rejected, organizers would have had to wait a year before trying again.

Robert Cowgill, an English professor at Augsburg College and president of the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said higher education’s reliance on lower wage-earning adjuncts is an issue that must be addressed.

“These colleges are keeping their bottom line healthy by giving people with Ph.Ds substandard wages,” Cowgill said. “The vast majority of adjuncts think this is a way station to a tenure-track job, and in many cases it is not.”

Cowgill’s group advocates for professors’ academic freedom to study subjects of their choosing and present findings to peers. Cowgill said a university’s over-reliance on cheap labor and the decline in tenured positions threatens that academic freedom.

A 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling bars tenured professors who, like Cowgill, work at private institutions from joining a union because they play a role in school governance. Professors at public colleges and universities across the state are unionized, although those at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus are not.

For Swati Avasthi, an adjunct at Hamline University who teaches creative writing, the unionization effort is about more than wages, working conditions or academic freedom. It’s also about the promise that education brings success.

Avasthi’s parents immigrated to the U.S. with $8 in their pockets and through education achieved financial stability, Avasthi said.

“I grew up on this idea of what is essentially the American dream,” Avasthi said. “I can’t even make a living wage. It’s hard to be in fear that you cannot provide for your children with the type of education I am helping to provide at Hamline.”

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